SCHWANE, JOSEPH. - Theologian, b. at Dorsten in Westphalia on 2 April 1824, d. at Münster on 6 June 1891.
Ordained priest in 1849, he became a privatdozent in the Theological Faculty of Münster in 1853; there he obtained the chair of moral theology and history of dogma (1859), and later (1881) that of dogmatic theology.
Besides notable monographs on particular questions (Controversia de valore Baptismi haereticorum [Münster 1860]; De operibus supererogatorii et consiliis evangelicis [there 1868], etc.) and the systematic work Specielle Moraltheologie (3 vols., Freiburg im Br. 1873 and 1878), he published the well-known and valuable Dogmengeschichte (I and II, Münster 1862–69; III and IV, Freiburg im Br. 1882–90), which outlines, with first-hand learning, the development of the individual dogmatic treatises according to the four principal phases in the history of theological thought: the pre-Nicene age, the golden period of patristics, scholasticism, and the modern age.